When Lisa Applegath was looking to recruit a new associate advisor last November, she had more than her pick of the lot.

As the head of a team that manages $175 million in assets, Applegath, vice president and investment advisor with CIBC Wood Gundy in Toronto, had received about 100 applications for the position. After spending hours sifting through dozens of resumés, she whittled her list down to 15 potential candidates she would interview. From there, she would cut the list to seven.

But rather than letting her “gut” decide whom Applegath should bring in for a second round of interviews, she used a psychological test to make sure she had objective observations to back up her personal observations.

Using the Kolbe A Index, a test created by Arizona-based Kolbe Corp. , Applegath was able to narrow her candidate pool to three final interviewees.

The Kolbe test, which evaluates a candidate’s approach to solving problems, steered Applegath away from a personal bias she had developed during the interview process. She had had great conversational rapport with one candidate in the final seven, but that candidate’s Kolbe score indicated he lacked the approach to task management Applegath was looking for. The position required a “team player” who could begin a task without much direction, but the test results indicated the candidate Applegath favoured, however, needed a lot of direction before he could get started.

“Our team really liked him, but his strengths and weaknesses didn’t match what the position needed,” Applegath says. “He needed a lot of direction, and we didn’t want someone who didn’t have an independent streak.”

Without the test, Applegath says, she would have fallen into the classic hiring trap most managers find themselves in: hiring the candidate they like instead of hiring the candidate they need.

“We tend to gravitate toward people like us,” Applegath says. “But you want someone that complements the skills you already have.”

Aside from recruiting, personality tests can also be used to improve the effectiveness of your existing team, says Joanne Ferguson, a coach and partner with Advisor Pathways Inc. in Toronto. Ferguson tells of a financial advisor she had worked with who was ready to give his associate advisor the boot but decided to give the employee a Kolbe test to determine the root of the problem. The test revealed it was the lack of instruction, not lack of skill, that prevented the associate from successfully prospecting for clients.

The Kolbe results showed that the problem lay in the way the associate was being asked to go about his tasks. He scored high in the categories that indicate a need to gather information and to follow a process. The associate couldn’t simply pick up the phone and quickly begin chatting with a prospect without knowing anything about him or her. His boss, who could do this with ease, saw his employee as incompetent.

“Someone who scores high in what Kolbe calls ‘quick start’ can deal with the unknown, which is why they are great at cold-calling,” says Ferguson. “The quick starter is looking at his assistant and thinking, ‘What is wrong with this person?’”

After identifying the problem, Ferguson worked with the associate to develop a process he could follow when calling new prospects. It included creating a telephone script and preparing a call list in advance, which included talking points for each prospect.

“All he needed was a means to do his job differently,” Ferguson says. “It was a good lesson in how you invest money into [hiring and training] someone and then could have let them go, whereas all they really needed was a different means of doing their job to be more productive.”

Tests such as those supplied by Kolbe also can help managers determine the best way to communicate with employees with a variety of personalities, says Gary Bernier, founder of the Soft Skills Expert Inc. in Toronto, who uses several personality systems.
@page_break@Many executives, including senior financial advisors, reach their positions by rising through the ranks of a sales force, Bernier says. But excelling at sales doesn’t necessarily provide the skills required to lead a team, such as understanding how people approach their work and motivating them to complete tasks effectively. Says Bernier: “No one gets handed the secret rule of how to be a good manager.”

It’s a myth that a manager can solve communication problems on his or her own using “people-reading abilities,” says Stephen Friedman, executive coach and professor of organizational behavior at York University in Toronto.

“I often worry when [managers] tell me they are good at reading people,” he says. “In no other field than human resources do we assume we can read other people’s behaviour. No financial advisor would sit across from his or her clients and say, ‘I can read your financial needs.’ A gut feeling isn’t a complete picture.”

Personality tests are an objective tool used to fill in the blanks of what a manager’s “gut” cannot account for, Friedman adds. When used in conjunction with a straightforward job interview, such tests allow you to see whether the applicant’s personality traits match those required for the position.

To get the best use of a personality test for building a team, Friedman suggests, use them as Applegath did, in the recruitment stage.

When writing a job description, you should also develop a personality profile of the candidate ideally suited for that position. This way, before the first applicant comes in for an interview, you have a predetermined personality profile against which to benchmark the test scores.

Says Friedman: “With a test, you can say: ‘This role requires someone to be extroverted because they deal with clients, so I’ll need to test for extroversion’.”

The type of test you use to measure such traits will depend on the personality traits you need measured. Although Kolbe looks at how a person takes action in a given situation, it does not measure traits such as extroversion. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test, developed by Isabel Briggs Myers and her mother, Katharine Briggs, does. Published by Menlo Park, Calif.-based CPP Inc. , the Myers-Briggs test calculates a personality score based on traits such as extroversion, introversion and judgment.

Another test, True Colours, is a simplified version of the Myers-Briggs test developed by psychologist David Keirsey and published by Santa Ana, Calif.-based True Colors International. In this test, Bernier says, people are classified according to four personality colours or types. Candidates fall into one of the types, with a leading minor trait.

Personality tests such as True Colors can reveal where recurring communication conflicts erupt on a team, says Bernier. Natural communication barriers often come up between advisors and their assistants.

For example, you could be an “orange” manager, as identified by True Colors, who is concerned with big-picture concepts such as landing new prospects, while your assistant, a “gold,” focuses on ensuring forms are filled out correctly. Tests such as True Colours can help resolve those gaps by identifying contradictory traits and encouraging both parties to find ways to accommodate them.

“The test can show the manager that he needs to be more sensitive toward the way the gold assistant wants the forms filled out,” Bernier says. “Meanwhile, the gold can learn to fill out certain things on his or her own.”

Friedman adds that testing can help you become a more effective leader. “The most important assessment using a test is of yourself and your shortcomings,” he says. “It’s not just about finding out you are an orange and someone else is a gold. The thinking should be, ‘I’m an orange. What should I do to better get along with gold?’”

Which test is best? None of them, says Bernier. Different tests simply look at different traits. The test you choose will depend on what you want to measure. For example, you might use Kolbe to measure problem-solving approaches; Myers-Briggs for personality traits; True Colors to identify communication gaps.

For Applegath, testing was a worthwhile endeavour. She ended up with three candidates who had a Kolbe score that matched the profile she was looking for. She chose Matt Hennebury, her current associate. While Hennebury’s score wasn’t the strongest, his values and personality, combined with his high Kolbe score, made him a better fit than the other two candidates.

“It’s not an exact science,” Applegath says. “Values and likability are also important.”

IE